This expansionary $12bn hedge fund has hired Man AHL's head of equities in quant hiring spree

The head of equities at Man AHL has left after nearly ten years at the hedge fund to join Balyasny Asset Management as it wraps up an expansive year with a quantitative portfolio manager hiring spree.

Paul Chambers, a partner and head of equities at Man Group’s $19.2bn quantitative hedge fund AHL, has just joined Balyasny as a portfolio manager in its London office.

Chambers joined Man in June 2008, from fund manager Old Mutual where he was a quantitative developer. He’s held various roles over the last nine and a half years including senior quantitative portfolio manager and co-head of equities. Since 2015, he’s been a partner and head of equities at AHL. He left in November and joined Balyasny earlier this month.

Balyasny, the $12.1bn Chicago-based hedge fund, has been expanding its London operation over the course of 2017, hiring traders from investment banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan as well as from hedge fund competitors. Headcount increased in the UK by 86% throughout 2016, according to its latest accounts, and by a further 24% this year.

More recently, however, it has turned its attention to hiring quants. As well as Chambers, it also hired Steve Zymler, a senior quantitative researcher at Citadel who left in June, as a portfolio manager. He joined in November. Meanwhile, Salvatore Tesoro, a Cambridge PhD who spent just seven months as quant researcher at Credit Suisse, joined in September as a quant within its systematic strategies division.

Balyasny’s quant buildout started in the U.S. earlier this year. It hired Ulrich Brandy Pollmann, a managing director and senior quant trader at Credit Suisse in New York, as its global head of systematic strategies in April. It’s since brought in Shaoyi Li from Point72 Asset Management and Mason Liang, who joined from GMO in November.

Balyasny stated its ambitions earlier this year to become the ‘Amazon’ of hedge funds, and has been making significant hires across most investment strategies.

However, most hedge funds are in the market for top quants even as the end of the year approaches and firms start to eye hiring plans for 2018. Capula Investment Management, the $13bn hedge fund that has lost a series of C-suite employees this year, has made a series of quant hires over the past two months.